Real Estate

A real estate company has lost a 200 million yuan ($29.30 million) deposit and the right to buy a piece of land after failing to pay the amount bid at auction.

Beijing municipal bureau of land and resources yesterday announced they are cancelling Beijing Dalong Weiye Real Estate's qualification after they did not present the payment on time, the 21st Century Business Herald reported.

On November 20, 2009, Dalong Estate won the bid for a piece of land in Beijing's Shunyi district and rewrote the record on land purchases in 2009. The property developer agreed to pay 5.05 billion yuan for the plot.

China invested a whopping 3.6 trillion yuan ($527.30 million) in the property market last year, a 16 percent year-on-year jump from 2008, the nation's top statistician said at a news conference yesterday.

While property development investments rose 16.1 percent, sales and construction starts slowed, Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, said.

Property sales were up 43 percent year-on-year in December, a major decline from the 100 percent leap in sales seen in November, according to figures from the bureau.

December housing starts rose 34 percent year-on-year, down from a staggering 194 percent in November.

China's top number cruncher has been closely monitoring quickly rising prices.

"My worry is real estate prices have risen exceptionally fast in certain cities and regions," said Ma.

Government plans to make China's southern island province of Hainan an international tourist resort have cut the supply of housing as owners and developers hold out for huge profits.

More than 200 property buyers had arrived everyday since the end of last year when the government unveiled plans to turn the tropical island into a top international destination by 2020, said Li Zhuo, a salesman with Rongyu Project in Haikou, the provincial capital.

Prices were rising by about 1,000 yuan ($164) per sq m each day on some properties and properties that had been selling for 15,000 yuan a sq m at the beginning of the year were now asking 20,000 yuan, he said.

Property trading in Beijing in the first two weeks of this year slumped, following a string of government moves to curb soaring real estate prices.

Beijing property transaction management authority said on its website Friday that sales of future delivery residential apartments during Jan 1 to Jan 13 were down 63.9 percent month-on-month to 3,031 units, compared with 8,397 units in the first half of December.

Those for second-hand homes also plunged 73.3 percent to 4,800 units, according to data from the website.

The relatively small transaction volume was largely due to a strong wait-and-see mood from the buyers, in response to the government's efforts to deflate property bubbles, said Gao Shan, vice general manager of the Beijing-based Comprehensive Real Estate Service Corporation.